{"id":47848,"date":"2011-06-28T20:38:55","date_gmt":"2011-06-29T00:38:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/47848\/echoes-distant-idealism-z-axis\/"},"modified":"2011-06-28T20:38:55","modified_gmt":"2011-06-29T00:38:55","slug":"echoes-distant-idealism-z-axis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/47848\/echoes-distant-idealism-z-axis\/","title":{"rendered":"Echoes of Distant Idealism on the “Z” Axis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Echoes of Distant Idealism<\/font>
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\nYou\u2019re probably familiar with multi-axis interpretations of an individual\u2019s take on reality.\u00a0 I think my very first exposure to this easily understood plotting of attitudes and impacts came from the old game Dungeons and Dragons.\u00a0 Who here remembers this graph? <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The idea is simple.\u00a0 You take two continuums, two spectrums of reality and plot a point on it to represent a particular position.\u00a0 In the above example, you have good versus evil, lawful versus chaotic.\u00a0 You then come up with a hyphenated \u201calignment\u201d which is supposed to tell you about a person\u2019s view of the world.\u00a0 Just to come up with some examples off the top of my head: Robin Hood was \u201cchaotic good\u201d.\u00a0 Moses was \u201clawful good\u201d.\u00a0 Mussolini would have been \u201clawful evil\u201d and Charles Manson would be \u201cchaotic evil\u201d. \u00a0<\/p>\n

My good friend Rachel Maddow recently talked about a multi-axis interpretation of political thought.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure she didn\u2019t come up with this, but her analysis was useful in understanding the political world today.\u00a0 We are all familiar with the conservative-liberal axis.\u00a0 The left-right, Democrat vs. Republican way of looking at the world.\u00a0 Conservatives believe in individual rights over the good of the community.\u00a0 They think change and progress are to be looked at with caution.\u00a0 Liberals think that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one and that society can be engineered to benefit all the members in it through public policy.\u00a0 I\u2019ll admit that is a very simplistic way of looking at this division, but it will suffice for now.<\/font><\/p>\n

\"\"There exists another division in politics: Authoritarian versus libertarian.\u00a0 This is the lesser known of the two spectrums I am talking about here, but it is not a new division.\u00a0 We can easily look at history and show how regimes which were very different on the left-right ideology (say Stalin vs. Hitler) were very similar on the authoritarian versus libertarian scale. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The North American continent gives us three examples of how a society can be organized politically which represent positions on these axes. Canada is liberal but authoritarian.\u00a0 Sure, they have their right-wing part of their democracy, but as compared to others on the conservative-v-liberal scale, the right wing in Canada is moderate anywhere else.\u00a0 Mexico, on the other hand, is very much a conservative society but one which the government (partially due to resource limitations) cannot play a big role in people\u2018s lives.\u00a0 They had a big revolution 90 years ago to issue in the power of the people, and since then, they\u2019ve been\u00a0 mostly ruled by a Christian, conservative, individualistic hegemony.\u00a0 The USA is somewhere in between those two.\u00a0 We\u2019ve proven ourselves unable to institute something like a Canadian, government run health care system, but at the same time we provide a societal welfare safety net\u00a0 that Mexico could only dream of.\u00a0 Our government will fuck with your personal liberties, but only so far. <\/font><\/p>\n


\n<\/font>
\nOn that multi-axis spectrum, here are the major nations of North America:<\/font><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n


\nLet\u2019s take some of the players in modern American politics and put them on this spectrum.\u00a0 Here is a guy who is making news these days for being the most disliked governor in the country.\u00a0 No, not Scott Walker, but he also fits into this quadrant.\u00a0 I\u2019m talking about Florida governor Rick Scott.\u00a0 He\u2019s gotten laws into place imposing the gov\u2019t into a woman\u2019s right to choose and drug testing for all gov\u2019t employees.\u00a0 He sees gov\u2019t intervention into YOUR life as sacrosanct, and as a conservative, he\u2019s got his own values that he thinks need to be imposed on everyone.\u00a0\u00a0 On the other side of the right-wing authoritairian\/libertarian spectrum is Rep Ron Paul. He\u2019s legalize heroin and doesn\u2019t want the gov\u2019t involved in any of our personal decisions. \u00a0<\/p>\n

On the liberal\/authoritarian side, we\u2019ll throw my previous congressperson under the bus, from when I lived in North Oakland.\u00a0 Representative Barbara Lee from the people\u2019s Republic of Berkeley. She\u2019s a good socialist. Her ally, but I think one who would disagree with her in regards to gov\u2019t getting involved in social issues comes from the other side of the country, Rep Barney Frank. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s Graph #2:
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\"\"
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Oh God, I can feel the eyes rolling up into the backs of the communal heads out there.\u00a0 What is the point of all this analysis?\u00a0 Graphs? Are you kidding us? <\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n

I want to point out to those who say that both the left and the right are the same that they aren\u2019t seeing the true reality of our political spectrum.\u00a0 Authoritarian v libertarian has to be considered too.\u00a0 Some say we, as a society, aren\u2019t doing enough.\u00a0 They say we are too free to do whatever we want and that will eventually destroy us. They think gay people shouldn\u2019t be allowed to marry.\u00a0 People should be forced to hear gov\u2019t imposed scripts before a medical procedure.\u00a0 Others say we are doing too much. People should be allowed to opt out of the system.\u00a0 Taxes should be optional, forget about medical insurance. Let me own an assault rifle if I feel like it. <\/p>\n

\"\"Which side is right?\u00a0 Well, unlike the liberal\/conservative spectrum where I am decidedly on the liberal side of things, on the authoritarian\/libertarian perspective, I am not really sure.\u00a0 Obviously, some infringement on personal liberties is required to fulfill the liberal agenda, but individual freedoms are what makes America great. \u00a0<\/p>\n

See, there is a third axis that is readily apparent to me personally. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"One end of that axis is personified by this comment which I read tonight in the midst of writing this blog: \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cright wing blogs left wing blogs >hate wing< blogs religious blogs … what u expect with such stupidity n frivolous waste of brain space? attention walmart shoppers !\u201d<\/font><\/em><\/p>\n

What I am talking about is the \u201cgive a shit\/make a difference\u201d<\/strong><\/em> axis. Some people think that it doesn\u2019t matter what they say, do or believe because it isn\u2019t going to matter in the grand scheme or they just don\u2019t care.\u00a0 It is hard to find people at the far end of this spectrum, unless, due to other attention seeking, narcissistic tendencies, they feel the need to point out to everyone how it doesn\u2019t matter and that they don\u2019t care.\u00a0 Otherwise, as you might imagine, these folks don\u2019t contribute a lot to the discussion. <\/p>\n

The other end of this spectrum are the zealots.\u00a0 These are the folks who take every little issue and point out how it exemplifies the state of our society.\u00a0 These are the blowhards, the doomsayers, the extremists and activists. If they have to devote 12 hours a day towards saving the Central Asian Long-eared Pika from the ravages of post-socialist Mongolian agrarian policy, then goddamnit, that\u2019s what they\u2019re going to do!!\u00a0 EVERYTHING Obama does is going to destroy the country!\u00a0 Nothing the conservatives have to offer has any value!\u00a0 Extremism isn\u2019t hard to find; by it\u2019s very nature, it\u2019s all over the internet. \u00a0<\/p>\n

At 14 years old, I was a Reagan Republican.\u00a0 By 18, I was a communist, ready to go to Peru to fight for El Sendero Luminoso.\u00a0 At 30, I was disgusted by politics and my \u201cgive a shit\u201d factor was at an all time low.\u00a0 Now, perhaps due to the inherent entertainment value of modern politics, I care again.\u00a0 I\u2019ll be writing songs. I\u2019ll be writing blogs. I\u2019m still a socialist, and I suppose that means I support authoritarian positions, I don’t know. Gy give-a-shit factor<\/em>, that is definitely on the rise.\u00a0 I’ll never be as passionate about it as some of the folks around here seem to be (but I wonder if most of it isn’t simple self-righteous indignation), but my “Z” axis is sloping upwards <\/p>\n

<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Echoes of Distant Idealism You\u2019re probably familiar with multi-axis interpretations of an individual\u2019s take on reality.\u00a0 I think my very first exposure to this easily understood plotting of attitudes and impacts came from the old game Dungeons and Dragons.\u00a0 Who here remembers this graph? \u00a0 The idea is simple.\u00a0 You take two continuums, two spectrums […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,1428,25],"tags":[81,69,234,680,1170],"class_list":["post-47848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-friendburst","category-politics-2","category-world","tag-joko","tag-life-2","tag-politics","tag-vera-wangs-spring-collection","tag-world-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47848\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}